Top 5 Google Chrome Tricks that you must know

January 16, 2016

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3 min read

CHROME is a very good internet browser and I am happy with it personally. There are lots of features that make chrome the no.1 browser. However, some of these features are not known to everyone. Please note that 5 extra tricks have been added to this post making a total of 10. So, here are the top 10 hidden features of google chrome.

Use chrome as a video/audio player, PDF viewer, etc.

You can use your favorite browser to open PDFs, videos, music, images(including vectors), etc. All you have to do is drag and drop the file into a new tab and chrome will run it for you.

Remove PDF protection

If you have a password protected PDF, then you will need to enter the password each time to open it and it can be very frustrating. You can remove the password using specialized software, but there is a very simple google chrome trick to remove PDF file password.

Quickly search within a site from Omnibox

The Omnibox allows you to search within the website that you’ve typed in by hitting the tab key. Not all websites support this feature. If you are a web developer and is looking to implement Omnibox search for your website, then read my answer on StackOverflow. Adding Omnibox search support with auto-completion for your site

Save webpage as a single file

Go to chrome://flags/#save-page-as-mhtml and click enable to activate mhtml feature. Once enabled, you can choose mhtml option when saving web pages to save as a single file instead of saving the web page as a complete folder. It’s a very efficient way of storing HTML files.

Try latest experimental/beta features

You can try out the latest experimental steps by visiting chrome://flags. Some of these features include material designs, mhtml, scroll prediction, dev features, etc.

Dev Console

Since Google chrome has a dev console window, you could write scripts to scrape content, modify a page, etc. We have utilized this feature to extract URLs from a website in our previous post.

Enable offline mode

Image Source: Labnol.org

With offline mode you can load saved pages of website that you have visited even when you don’t have an internet connection. Enable offline mode in Google chrome using this link – chrome://flags/#show-saved-copy . Then select the primary options from the drop down and relaunch chrome.

Resume Interrupted Downloads

Chrome lacks the option to resume interrupted downloads and that is very bad! But you can enable this feature from the chrome experimental settings. Simply go to this URL and click enable to activate this feature. chrome://flags/#enable-download-resumption

Incognito Mode for private browsing

Incognito mode allows you to search the web privately. Your browsing history is not recorded when using incognito mode. However, you are still being monitored by the ISP’s. For more advanced protection you can use free VPN service to spoof your location. The windows shortcut (Ctrl + Shift + T) for reopening closed tabs will not work when browsing in incognito mode.

Omnibox as a calculator

The Omnibox, the text field where you type the website address is quite smart. You can solve math using the Omnibox without having to hit enter to search for it.

If you know any other Google Chrome tricks make sure to share it in the comments.